The Departure
by Popering
Summary: Ed knew it was his fault, it was always his fault. pre-CoS


**A/N:** this is my first attempt at fanfiction...please be gentle... i hope to improve in the future. I tried for angst, hopefully that's what i got

* * *

In hindsight, Ed really shouldn't have been so surprised. It had still hurt, though.

He'd left a week earlier on a train headed toward Transylvania to meet Dr. Oberth and another group of people studying rocketry that Oberth had been sponsoring. He and the professor had been exchanging letters recently and Oberth had wanted to meet with him to discuss joining said group. He had told the team all about Ed and they were just itching to meet him, or so he was told.

Ed desperately wanted to find a way back to his brother, or even just find out if he was alive, but he didn't think he could afford to get his hopes up. After all, hope was just the first step to disappointment. Cautiously, he'd agreed to go.

What he hadn't expected was for Hohenheim to be gone when he got back.

When Ed first arrived, he figured his father had just been out at the time. Ed waited. His old man would be back soon. Ed hadn't even told him exactly when he'd be back, so he wasn't surprised Hohenheim wasn't there to greet him when he made it through the door. It was no big deal. However, after a few hours had passed he began to worry, not that he would ever admit it.

He attempted to distract himself. His stomach suggested that he could start on dinner by the loud growling it kept producing. After all, he'd carelessly forgotten to eat lunch due to the fact he was so caught up in considering the team's offer to have him work with them. He'd mulled over it the entire train ride and still hadn't come to a conclusion yet; he couldn't stop thinking about the youngest member of the team who looked just like...

Ed shut down that train of thought. It hurt too much.

The more time that passed, the more fear started to tug at Ed's heart. Panic was starting to swell and Ed tried to deny it, tried to tell himself his dad would be home soon and that he was stupid for worrying. Once Hohenheim got back he'd probably berate himself for caring so much about what that bastard was up to.

More time passed. He called Hughes, he called Gracia, he even asked some of his neighbors if they'd seen Hohenheim. They all seemed surprised to see the boy and told him they hadn't heard from his father in days. Ed really didn't want to panic, but the sun was starting to fall and he could see the faintest traces of stars and there was no way Hohenheim would just leave him again, right? He wouldn't do that twice, right? Ed could forgive him once, but he wasn't sure he could do it twice. What would he do if his father didn't come back? The more he thought about it, the more unsure he became. Ed sighed.

"This is ridiculous," he huffed to no one, wanting to push it out of his mind.

He stood up from the table he'd been eating at and decided to go to sleep. The former alchemist would wait to see if Hohenheim was back by morning before getting worked up about it.

Ed valiantly tried to tell himself he didn't care one way or the other, he'd been on his own before and he could do it again. But the truth was that he'd never been _this_ alone before, trapped in a completely foreign world where everyone looked familiar but wasn't. It actually made everything scarier; everything felt like a strange dream he couldn't wake up from. Maybe it was a nightmare. At any rate, nothing seemed very real anymore. The surreal-ness of the world around him made Ed wary of anyone he recognized. Their faces made Ed want to trust them, but the problem was he didn't actually _know_ them. Hohenheim was the only person he could really trust, ironically.

Ed wouldn't say it out loud, but without his father, he felt helplessly alone in the world and he wasn't sure if he could handle it. Ed silently dragged himself to bed that night with low expectations and a heavy heart.

* * *

The blond tried to stifle the quiet panic that erupted in his chest when he woke up and noticed the apartment was just as quiet as the night before. Nothing had disturbed Ed's sleep all night: no front doors opening, no keys jingling, no footsteps plodding down the hall into the adjacent room. He could feel it in his gut — Hohenheim had run off. Ed's heart dropped to his stomach, but it's not like he cared. At least, that was what he wanted to think.

He had to make sure, though. He had been too much of a coward the night before, trying desperately to deny the idea that his dad might have deserted him again, and so he had avoided it, but he had to know. Without making hardly a sound, Ed slowly, uncertainly made his way out of bed and shuffled down the hall. Hohenheim's bedroom door was closed and, much to Ed's chagrin, that made him afraid. The kid's reluctance to open the door came from the inexplicable knowledge that nothing would be behind it when he turned the knob. He ended up waiting outside for awhile, attempting to postpone the inevitable.

Eventually, he told himself to just _open the damn door_ _and get it over with already_ , like ripping off a bandaid. He took a deep breath to steady himself before entering.

Of all the times in the past Ed had prided himself on always being right, just this once he wished he couldn't have been more wrong. When the door swung open, the only thing he saw was the dim morning sunlight illuminating a neatly made bed and a shelf devoid of any belongings. He checked everywhere. He searched the desk, he looked in the dresser, the closet, the little side table, even under the bed. It looked like no one had ever lived there to begin with. Everything was gone. _Everything._

"God _dammit_!" He yelled. It reverberated around the empty apartment, reminding him just how alone he was. He was faintly aware that he was pulling on his bangs, but he couldn't bring himself to stop.

He tried to not care. He tried _so hard_ to tell himself that his bastard of a dad could do whatever the hell he wanted and Ed wouldn't give a single damn but why did he have to walk out on him _again_? Wasn't once enough? Was he really that awful of a son?

To the boy's great horror, he found that his vision was starting to blur with unshed tears. What the hell was he crying for?

Ed knew it was his fault, it was always his fault. Couldn't he do anything right!? It was his fault his father had left the first time, it had to be. Consequently, that made him partly to blame for sending his beautiful mother to rot in the ground. He was the only one to blame for turning her into a monster and he was the only one to blame for condemning his little brother to an unfeeling hell. It was his own damn fault he wasn't with Alphonse right now. He didn't want to think about it, but there was a real possibility Al was dead. The only solace he found was in knowing he was certainly paying the price for it all now. This world was a frightening, violent mockery of his own and now he was irrevocably alone in it. This was the kind of hell he deserved.

It was obvious Hohenheim had ditched him; had cast him aside to fend for himself without so much as a goodbye. It was just like last time, except his mother and brother weren't here with him for this go-around. That's how Ed knew it was his fault: the only constant between the two times his father had left was him. It was all his fault. Ed already had a few major holes in his heart, but in that moment he felt a new one blossom. There wasn't much left of him at this point. He couldn't help but feel resoundingly empty.

Hohenheim had made sure to take everything with him, leaving nothing behind, except his son. Ed knew he wasn't always good enough, knew there were a lot of people that wouldn't put up with him, but he'd hoped, naively, that his father wouldn't be one of them, not this time around anyway. In the end though, Ed knew he was just as unwanted as he'd ever been. He wasn't wanted and he didn't belong here, so why was he _here_!? Ed prayed uselessly to some deity he didn't deserve help from that he could go home. He wanted to be with his brother again, maybe even his mother if he was lucky.(He never had been)

In Ed's mind, it was pretty blatant that Hohenheim had hit the road with the intention of getting away from him. So why should he bother looking?

What did he care anyway? That bastard had never been around for him. In Ed's brief but eventful 16 years of life, his father had been there for less than a quarter of it. Ed couldn't care less about what his dad thought about him, it's not like Hohenheim ever knew him in the first place, not really. Ed was glad to be rid of him. He was unreliable and he didn't deserve Ed's trust. How dare he think he could just walk in and out of Ed's life whenever he pleased? Yeah, it was a good thing Hohenheim was gone, or so the blond told himself. In reality, he was just tired of being let down.

Ed decided a couple of things in that moment, the first being that he never wanted to see Hohenheim again. The boy would never own up to it, but he felt an undue amount of shame at being left behind a second time, like some worn-out, discarded belonging that didn't deserve a second thought. He supposed no one in this world cared about him. The second thing he decided right then was that he was going to accept Oberth's offer and leave this wretched place. He wasn't sure what would happen to himself if he didn't get out soon.


End file.
